


A Matter of Form

by misura



Category: Primeval
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-25
Updated: 2010-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-25 22:46:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Is this a proposal?"</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matter of Form

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _Nick/Lester, dealing with all the red tape and paperwork_

The key to success in the civil service was delegation, combined with the ability to pretend you got along swimmingly with people you actually couldn't stand.

"Give these to Cutter, will you?"

"Yes, sir."

They key to _happiness_ , on the other hand, seemed to consist at least in part of doing every bloody thing yourself, and of spending rather large amounts of time in the company of people who seemed to be in the habit of making you either want to kill them or worry about them dying.

It was all rather vexing, really.

Lester knew there'd been a reason why he'd gotten a divorce, other than that whole business with his never being home in time for dinner and Mary never being home in time for breakfast.

 

Nick came striding into his office around Lester's third cup of tea of the morning, which was one cup later than he'd expected. He wondered if Leek had dawdled, for some reason known only to Leek.

"What's this?" There was an art to slapping down a piece of paper on a desk and making it look impressive without producing much in the way of sound, or severely injuring your hand. Nick clearly hadn't mastered it yet.

"Hm?" There was also an art to always looking like you'd just been interrupted while you'd been in the middle of something rather more important and interesting than whatever the person interrupting you could possibly have to say to you. "Oh, this?" In some ways, it was less of an art and more of a requirement to be even considered for a position of any power in the civil service, of course.

Lester gave Nick the look that said: _'don't you have a couple of dinosaurs to hunt down?'_.

Nick looked back in a way that informed Lester that if any anomalies were to open, Lester would know about them the exact same moment Nick would, if not sooner.

"It appears to be a form to apply for a civil partnership." This being the 21st century, there was an on-line form, too, only Lester hadn't been able to think of a way to slip that into Nick's daily pile of paperwork ( _'you don't need to read all of it - just put your signature on the dotted line'_ , he'd told Nick the first time, to which Nick had replied: _'I don't think so'_ , thereby absolving Lester from any and all traces of guilt he might ever experience about delegating any paperwork to him). "Your name's already filled in as the applicant," Lester pointed out. "Seems perfectly clear to me."

Nick gave him a long look. "Is this a proposal?"

Lester went back to reading a report - one of Connor's, so a bit lacking in the 'clear, concise and using as many long, meaningless words as possible' department, and with illustrative doodles in the margin ( _'makes the thing look a bit more cheerful, what?'_ Connor'd said and Lester, in a fit of stupefying rage and indignation, hadn't been quite able to vocalize what he'd thought of that notion before Nick had dragged him away, thereby probably saving Connor's life).

"Please fill it in and have it back on my desk by five this evening," he said.

Nick left. He took the form with him, though, so Lester allowed himself to be cautiously hopeful for all of three seconds before scribbling _'don't make inappropriate comments on the 'hotness' of your colleagues'_ in the margin of Connor's report.

 

"I think he shredded it, sir," Leek said, and for all that Lester disliked the man to a degree where he worried it might actually show a bit, he had to admire the way Leek managed to keep a perfectly straight face.

Not in Lester's league, of course, but Lester could picture Leek holding a position of moderate responsibility at some point in his career. It was a rather depressing prospect. "Who, what, and why should I care?"

"Professor Cutter, sir," Leek said. The absence of smugness in Leek's voice annoyed Lester rather more than its presence might have - it wasn't that he minded hypocrisy, but when people could lie to you without having it show, you were either not as good at your job as you thought you were, or you were about to be replaced, and Lester couldn't say he much cared for either option.

By rights, he should have pressed Leek a bit - at least point out Leek had only replied to the who part of his question, not the what or why. His heart wasn't quite in it though, so Lester decided to give himself a break and let it go. "Oh, that."

"I'm sorry, sir."

 

After Leek, Connor was almost a relief of sorts.

"What'd I do?" It only lasted until Connor opened his mouth, of course.

"Nothing I want to know about. Just need you to rewrite that report you turned in yesterday." He gestured at the report in question.

Connor picked it up, sighed and flopped down in the only chair Lester kept in his office aside from his own. He'd tried it only once, to make sure it was indeed as uncomfortable as it looked. (It had been worse, actually.) "So I heard about you and Cutter," Connor said. "About how he turned you down and everything."

"Has someone ever told you you shouldn't believe everything you hear?" Lester was disturbed to hear a note of pleading in his voice.

Predictably, Connor didn't notice. "Well, yeah, but I didn't believe them," Connor said. "Obviously."

"Obviously," Lester echoed. "Was there a point you were getting at?"

"Just wanted to say I'm sorry, and that I know how you feel." Lester raised one eyebrow. Connor got up and reached over the desk to pat his shoulder. "Love sucks, you know? And hey, if you ever want to talk ... " Lester allowed himself to facially express his feelings at that offer. Connor coughed and withdrew his hand. "Which clearly, you don't. Okay. No harm, no foul, right?"

"It's highly inappropriate to refer to your colleagues as 'hot'," Lester said. "I'll be expecting a revised version of your report on my desk by five o'clock today. That will be all. You can go now."

Connor went.

(Five minutes later, he came back to get the report.)

 

Lunch consisted of a sandwich, a cup of coffee and twenty pages of a fifty-page commentary on Lester's latest thirty-something-page report on how the ARC had managed to stay within its budget this past month and ought to be better-funded in the next. (Lester'd known when he submitted it that it'd be an uphill battle, of course; the general view in the civil service was that only people who were too incompetent to stay within budget deserved to have their problem solved by getting more money, whereas people who were competent enough to make do only got their budgets slashed - never mind what that money actually was needed for.)

Connor turned in his report at four, which was good - Nick walked into Lester's office at five minutes past five, dumping a stack of paperwork on his desk and sitting down as if he planned to stay there for a while. That probably wasn't good.

"A bit late, aren't you?" It might be a peace-offering, Nick giving him something to complain about, something small and insignificant - except that Lester thought being punctual with one's paperwork was far more important than any kind of official-acknowledgement-of-a-personal-relationship could ever be.

"Buy me dinner," Nick said.

Lester considered. "Is it your turn to cook and do the dishes again this evening?"

Taking someone to dinner was, for lack of a less emotionally loaded term, a _dating ritual_. It was something people did who weren't absolutely sure about each other yet, a way to show off how much money you didn't make and how poor your taste in restaurants really was. (Lester's taste in restaurants was excellent, obviously, but he'd been slightly appalled at Nick's.)

"I'm serious." Nick _looked_ serious, too.

Lester gave in to the inevitable. "Oh, very well."

With any kind of luck, they'd get an anomaly alert right before the main course. With even more luck, the restaurant wouldn't insist on charging Lester for a dinner he hadn't, in fact, gotten to eat.

 

"All right, now ask me."

Lester managed not to answer with _'ask you what?'_ mostly because the connection between his brains and his mouth didn't quite work properly yet. Nick had that effect on him sometimes, although fortunately, the effect seemed to require skin-to-skin contact of a kind not usually occuring in the workplace. "I don't think I will," he said instead.

"I wasn't going to say no." Nick sounded annoyed, as if Lester was the one who was making a big deal out of signing a simple form that would formalize their relationship, instead of the one who'd treated it as an insignificant thing, just another bit of paperwork to get done.

"You already did that."

Nick shifted. "How'd you ever get married?"

"I was young and foolish and in love," Lester said, mostly because he got this odd but sort of pleasant feeling when he managed to make Nick laugh.

"You're not so old now," Nick said. "I'll sign the bloody form if it makes you happy."

 _'It's not the paperwork, it's you,'_ Lester didn't say, because that would make him sound like an idiot, and Nick was already playing that part so well; it seemed a shame to upstage him.

"Thank you."


End file.
